India pushes market access for its professionals under WTO
Union Minister of Commerce & Industry Kamal Nath today said India is aggressively pushing for easier movement for professionals across territorial frontiers under the WTO regime. This would give ensure greater market access for India in the services sector, Mr Nath said.
"Increase in the size of the firms with proper regulation to deliver quality service alone would not fetch market access in other countries. For this to happen, we believe that visa rules and procedures, grant of work permits, etc. should be facilitated without making them prisoners of labour market tests, economic needs tests and other related impediments of market access," he said while addressing the 55th Annual Function of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), here today.
Mr Nath said India had also been actively engaged in negotiations for Economic Cooperation Agreements with various countries and trading blocs, which would again create market access opportunities for Indian professionals.
In each of these agreements, he said necessary steps were being taken to work out Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) with the professional associations of the concerned countries.
"Considerable amount of work is now undertaken through back office operations. This has provided employment to a large number of people in the country. It is estimated the Back Office Operations and other Business Process Outsourcing services in India, which amounted to 2 billion dollars in 2002, will rise 11-fold to $ 22 billion by 2008," he said.